


All Shall Fall Down (and Worship)

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Episode s04e05 coda, M/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-15 09:37:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12318423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: Raylan visits Boyd after the events of "Kin." (He never could stay away.)





	All Shall Fall Down (and Worship)

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was: "A coda to 4.5 (Kin) would be great. Key quote: 'For it is only criminals who presume to damage other people nowadays without the aid of philosophy.'"
> 
> So, you'll need to have seen season four to understand what's going on. It's more or less canon compliant, with a Raylan/Boyd slant. Title and idol mentions are from Daniel (chapters 3 and 2) in the Bible.

Raylan’s headlights flash across the bar’s windows as he turns into the parking lot, hits the brakes and idles the car.

It’s full dark, by then, stars scattered across a moonless sky, brighter in Harlan than anywhere else he’s ever been. He wonders how bright the stars were in Kuwait. Can imagine what Boyd would say if he asked – _Raylan, I stood in the vastness of the desert, my gun at my shoulder, a modern Abraham sent out to number the children of God._

Boyd’s suffered for his confidence, but he’s never suffered its lack.

He’s not there more than a minute before the passenger door opens and a lithe silhouette slips inside, pointedly rubbing its wrists.

Raylan’s car sounds no different than any other midsize sedan pulling into the gravel lot in front of the bar – but he could pick out the rumble of Boyd’s truck from a full stadium at a baseball game twenty-five years ago, can feel it in the twinge of his bones and the shiver at the back of his neck when Boyd walks into the Lexington courthouse. It’s hardly a miracle that Boyd can return the favor.

Boyd has _acolytes_. He wouldn’t waste his miracles on Raylan.

“Surprised to see me?” Boyd wonders, sipping from a bottle he’d carried out of the bar, the glitter of glass and liquid under the glow of a streetlight.

Raylan pulls onto the road, heading east, his hat tipped back and his hand curled loosely around the wheel. The clock is still ticking – find Drew Thompson before Arlo makes a deal and walks – but it feels less urgent than it did hours ago, though now he’s racing not only to keep his daddy in prison but also to outwit Boyd.

“Surprised to see you with hands,” he replies easily, takes the bottle when Boyd offers it, lets the top-shelf bourbon roll over his tongue. “Thought you’d have gnawed them off to escape.”

Boyd is shadows and darkness but for the white curve of his grin. “Well, Raylan, you’d be amazed the things modern medicine can do these days. A few stitches and here I am, as good as new.”

The road narrows as they head into hills, potholes followed by patches of uneven pavement before even that disappears into the remains of a wagon trail popular when the colonies were young.

Nothing in Harlan is new: not the mines, not the poverty, not the ghosts. (Boyd is reborn every morning: a miner, a soldier, a preacher, a thief.)

It’s amazing the lengths teenaged boys will go to, desperate to escape the all-seeing eye of their elders and the loose lips of their peers. They’ll drive an old truck into the woods after a long shift at the mine, just for a moment of freedom: no bosses or daddies making any demands, no genteel folks wrinkling their noses, nothing but tepid beer and damp earth and black, starry skies.

Raylan parks in the field, climbs out and sits gingerly on the hood, mindful of the heat. Boyd joins him a moment later, the metal buckling slightly under their weight.

“You think we’ll find him?” Raylan asks, after taking off his hat so he can lean back and stare at the stars, the faint outline of the Milky Way. Frances always called it the stairway to heaven, because living with Arlo had made her devout, yearning for the chance to climb that divine staircase and escape.

Boyd shrugs. “I think we can do anything our daddies did.” He sighs, gulps down the bourbon without offering it the appreciation a liquor that fine deserves. “Maybe that’s what they’ll write on our graves.”

It’s more likely that that’s what will _dig_ their graves, faster draws than their daddies and on the fast track to a table in the morgue or an abandoned mine shaft in the hills.

“You mean you ain’t invincible?” Raylan steals the bourbon, leans into Boyd to do it and leaves himself pressed against Boyd’s side. “I’m disappointed to hear that, Boyd. After all that preaching, you’re gonna shatter my faith?”

Boyd shakes his head jerkily. He reaches out blindly, and Raylan lets their fingers tangle together. Boyd is cast out of molten gold and set on a pedestal, but Raylan held a boy’s hand once – and once you died with someone’s hand in yours, you never got a chance to let go. Boyd could reform every morning, but his fingers were trapped in Raylan’s; stubborn, vulnerable, _human_ clay.

“I poisoned a boy with his own faith,” he confesses quietly, as though it’s a sin and not the sort of miracle Boyd is famous for. “Despite your propensity to meddle in my affairs, I’d rather you didn’t come to a similar end.”

The bourbon slides smoothly across Raylan’s tongue, catches in his throat and burns a path into his chest.

“After all,” Boyd adds, smile like a shooting star. “If you died, who would save me from a one-way trip down a mine shaft?”

He doesn’t let go of Raylan’s hand. Boyd has no gods, anymore, and Raylan’s never been cast in gold, never been Boyd’s confessor or judge. Or maybe he’s been all of those things all along.

He passes Boyd the bourbon, tightens his grip on Boyd’s sweaty fingers and stares up at the night sky. The stairway to heaven isn’t for the likes of them – atheists and murderers, idols and idolaters – but they had ascended out of hell years ago, holding hands, and Boyd’s looking at him now like he believes Raylan can perform miracles all his own.

 


End file.
